Kicker Matt Bryant, back home in Bridge City nearly two decades ago, knew he faced a mountainous obstacle in chasing his fantasy of playing pro football. At the same time his close friends knew they faced a mountainous obstacle every time they climbed in Bryant's single cab truck, thanks to his single-minded routine in pursuit of a dream.

"Matt drove this green-looking, Chevy step side," recalled one of Bryant's best friends, Hector Oceguera, with a chuckle. "And he had this big old sports bag, filled with footballs. He'd have that bag sitting up in the cab, and when you tried climbing in he'd say, 'Throw 'em in the back.'"

That bag of balls played its role in the realization of an aspiration, and so did a random tree here or there in Orange County and beyond in southeast Texas. Trees 100 miles from where Bryant will line up for kicks on Sunday in Super Bowl LI in NRG Stadium for the Atlanta Falcons against the New England Patriots.

Bryant, undrafted out of Baylor following his senior season of 1998, at the time gave himself four years to try and become a pro kicker, and in the meantime he worked at K & C Pawn Shop in Orange. If it didn't happen in four years, Bryant vowed, he was headed into law enforcement.

"There were times during that four-year period where maybe I hadn't kicked in a couple of weeks," Bryant remembered this week. "I'd be driving down the road and think, 'If somebody calls you tonight, and wants you to work out in the morning and you're not ready … you're going to be pretty upset with yourself.'

"So I would literally stop on the side of the road, find an open field, find a tree in the distance and kick at it for accuracy. If it was at night, I'd turn on the lights."

The light finally came on for Bryant, who'd kicked at Bridge City High, Trinity Valley Community College in Athens, Oregon State and finally Baylor. In 2002 he attended what was billed as an "NFL" kicking camp in Atlanta, only there weren't any actual NFL personnel milling about. But someone who was, kicking coach Paul Assad, urged Bryant to attend Assad's upcoming camp in Reno, Nev.

"Every NFL team's special teams coordinator was there," Bryant recalled of his relief at the sight.

A handful of teams asked Bryant to stick around for another day, and a few days afterward the Giants signed him to a contract.

"Fifteen years later, here I am," Bryant said this week, of taking part in his first Super Bowl after being with six NFL teams since 2002, and the Falcons since 2009.

'He's aged like wine'

The NFL career of Bryant, a doting husband and father of seven, is more fascinating considering he earned his first Pro Bowl selection this season, at the age of 41, after connecting on 34 of 37 field goals (92 percent) during the regular season.

His career long of 62 yards in 2006 was the second longest in NFL history at that time, behind a couple of 63-yard kicks by Tom Dempsey and Jason Elam.

"Talk about an inspirational story," said Falcons tight end Austin Hooper, who at 22 is about half Bryant's age. "He's aged like wine. He's playing his best football at 41."

Back home in Bridge City 15 years ago, Oceguera marveled at Bryant's persistence in finally wrangling an NFL contract. At the time the childhood friends worked at the pawn shop together for then-owner J.A. Whitehead, and Ocegeura has owned the pawn shop since Whitehead's death a few years ago.

"We had played Little League football all the way up through high school together, and after Matt came back home from Baylor he worked at the shop to make a little money here and there," Oceguera said. "He would take that bag of footballs over to the middle school near here on his lunch break, and kick and kick.

"He would pick up lunch on the way back and eat then, and we'd joke, 'Why are you eating? You just went to lunch.' It goes to show you how determined he was to make it."

Bryant's father, the late Casey Bryant, had fashioned a ball holder out of PVC pipe, so Bryant could kick alone, whether it was at West Orange-Stark Middle School near the pawn shop or in some empty field in Orange County.

"Now you can buy things like that at Academy," Oceguera said of the holder. "But that was a pretty neat thing his dad had made him at that time."

Bryant's determination was evident coming out of Bridge City when he was lightly recruited in 1994 in part because the Cardinals weren't very good. Bryant, also a standout high school catcher, had signed to play baseball at Panola College in Carthage.

"I didn't have any scholarship offers in football," Bryant said. "But then after I signed with Panola, Trinity Valley asked me to come play football."

Swapping schools

So he worked out a clever pact with all of his new coaches.

"Trinity Valley didn't have baseball, and Panola didn't have football," Bryant said. "So I played football at Trinity Valley that fall, and at mid-term I transferred to Panola to play baseball. Then I transferred back to Trinity Valley to play football."

Falcons offensive tackle Jake Matthews, who grew up in Missouri City, shook his head at that kind of tenacity that's landed Bryant in the Super Bowl - better than ever at 41.

"Incredible, look where he's come from and how he's stuck to it," Matthews said. "And Matt has been money for us all year."

Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle and chron.com covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.

Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He’s a four-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the San Antonio Express-News, including a second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione “secret newsletter” scandal in 2007.

His coverage of Texas A&M’s move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012. Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.